


A Long Overdue Apology

by What_Happens_To_The_Heart



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Apologies, Drunkenness, Fluff and Angst, Forgiveness, Gen, Remorse, Trauma, drunken revelation, pre-books, sirius finally apologizing to remus for that night he lured snape to the shrieking shack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22724917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/What_Happens_To_The_Heart/pseuds/What_Happens_To_The_Heart
Summary: Remus had his mind set on a quiet night at home, but Sirius has had a drunken revelation.
Relationships: Sirius Black & Remus Lupin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	A Long Overdue Apology

**Author's Note:**

> It never sat right with me how the books glossed over how fucked up it was for Sirius to try to use Remus' lycanthropy to solve his Snape problem without Remus' consent. It's bad enough he thought potentially killing his nemesis was a reasonable solution, but using his best friend as a murder weapon? I just can't be wholeheartedly behind Remus' and Sirius' close friendship as adults and their reunion without believing (pretending?) that the fucked-up-ness of it all was fully acknowledged and profusely apologized for. So here's just that. 
> 
> P.s. I'm new to AO3 and to fanfic so if you think I'm missing any tags or am using any I shouldn't be, please let me know!

A loud thump cut through the evening hush of the small house, where previously only the sound of pages turning had broken the silence. Remus looked up from his book, casting a glance at the grandfather clock by the door. Past midnight. Had that really been a knock or just some noise from outside? Another thump followed by several more in quick succession answered his question. He put the book aside on the small table by the sofa, sticking a scrap of parchment in between the pages so he wouldn't lose his place. Wondering who it could be at this hour, Remus got up and headed into the hall, his bare feet padding softly against the wooden floor.

"Remus! Remus, are you in there?"

Remus quirked an eyebrow. He hadn't expected a visit from Sirius tonight, but there was no mistaking that voice. Besides, it was hardly unheard of for Sirius to stop by unannounced and crash on Remus' sofa after a night on the town. Remus opened the door, and there he was, unshaven and vaguely disheveled as always, seeming to sway very slightly as he leaned against the wall beside the door, looking away from Remus and down the dimly lit street.

"Can't a man get a moment's peace around here without some drunkard banging on his door?" Remus said by way of greeting, a wolfish grin on his face.

Sirius turned, a flurry of motion, and before Remus could react Sirius had locked him in an embrace so forceful it shoved them both half a step in through the door. He hadn't had time to catch a glimpse of his face but something in his manner, a tremble in his breath, an extra tightness in the way his arms wrapped around his shoulders, told Remus his friend was upset. 

"What now, Padfoot?" he asked, keeping the levity in his voice a moment longer. "Brokenhearted again? Who was it this time?" He laughed, but it came out a little forced; this wasn't the usual upset of an inebriated bruised ego or loneliness that would be gone by morning, this was something else.

Releasing him, Sirius pushed past and moved into the house, his black coat swirling dramatically around his legs as he stepped.

Puzzled, Remus closed the door and followed him into the living room, stepping around the muddy prints that trailed after Sirius' boots. Sirius had stopped by the window, his back to the room as he looked out into the night. Remus hesitated by the coffee table, watching him in silence for a moment. 

"Is something wrong, my friend?" he asked, voice soft now, every trace of manufactured levity gone.

"I..." Sirius began, voice raw with some unidentified emotion. "Today I wa-" He cut himself off, clearing his throat.

Remus was starting to feel unnerved. It wasn't like Sirius to act like this, to sound like this. It wasn't like him to be so affected, and it made Remus fear what might be affecting him so. "Come now, Padfoot, tell me... Did something happen?" He swallowed, waited a moment. No answer. "Bad news from the Order? Is it Lily and James, did s-"

"No, no," Sirius answered quickly, shaking his head. He turned around halfway, enough to meet his eyes a moment as he assuaged the worst of his fears. "No, nothing like that." He raked his hand through his hair, eyes full of apprehension, and then turned back around to face the window again.

"Well, what then?" Remus asked, vaguely relieved. In these times, ill news that didn't involve the death or disappearance of someone you cared for seemed to be a rarity, almost a luxury.

Still, the relief didn't last long, quickly overtaken by his concern over what was troubling his friend so.

"I was having a drink this evening," Sirius said, still keeping his back turned. "This place off Diagon Alley. I was talking to the barman and I saw... I saw Snivellus, just passing by, outside the window... And I pointed to him and I said 'You see that pasty bastard? I don't know anyone who hates me like that man does'. The barman asked how come, so I said..." His voice faltered a little, and he licked his lips and went on. "I said 'oh, no proper reason. He's just a bit sore that I tried to get him bitten by a werewolf when we were at school together.'"

Remus recoiled without meaning to, taking a step back. Of all the bad nights of his life, and there had been some truly bad nights, that was the one night he preferred never to think about at all. It was sealed away in some special room in his memory, kept there under lock and key so that his friendship with Sirius could stay strong, so that he could keep loving him in spite of what he had done. He didn't want that door opened, not ever and certainly not in such troubled times as these.

"And he-" Sirius went on. "-he laughed, he assumed I was joking and I... I laughed at him not knowing I wasn't. I laughed and then... then I couldn't laugh, be-"

"Sirius," Remus interrupted him, turning away. "Let's not talk about this." He took a few steps, a line of tension drawn over his thin shoulders, then dropped onto the sofa, pulling one knee up to his chest and leaning back as if he was trying to sink into the upholstery. 

"Wait, listen to me!" Sirius turned away from the window fully this time, his tone insistent, almost desperate. "Please, let me say this..." He took a few steps closer, but when he saw Remus shrink further back into the pillows at his approach, he froze, a crest-fallen expression on his face. He stood still there a moment, then sank into the solitary armchair opposite the sofa, head in his hands.

Silence descended over the room, only broken by the ticking of the grandfather clock and the occasional muffled sound from outside. Remus sat, arms hugged tightly across his chest as if he wanted to give the tightness in it an external cause to overpower the internal one. How many times had the memory of that night come back to make him freeze? How many nights had he woken, drenched in sweat, the specter of Severus' mangled body dancing inside his eyelids? How many days had he barely had the energy to leave the house, mind darkened by the weight of month after month of hypothetical murders he hadn't quite committed? 

He was painfully aware of Sirius' presence in the room. He wanted to scream at him to get out, that he had no right to stir these memories awake and then stay around to gawk at his reaction. He felt the expectations hanging in the air, the same ones as all those years ago. The expectation to forgive, to say there was nothing even to forgive. The expectation to laugh at it, at the near-tarnishing of his very soul, to shrug it off and laugh at what a very good joke it would have been. 

He took deep, slow breaths and tried not to think of how sick he was of taking deep, slow breaths. At the corner of his eye, Remus was vaguely aware of Sirius' dejected form still slumped in the chair. He thought he heard him mumble something, but his pulse thrummed in his eardrums loudly enough to drown out any meaning. The next moment, Sirius let out a long, garbled sob. The sound was so strange, coming out of such a man's throat, that it pulled Remus a little ways out of the pit in his mind into which he had fallen. He sat up a little straighter, and turned his neck to look directly at his friend. Sirius' face was still in his hands, and his breathing was a series of half-choked gasps, shoulders shaking with the force of the emotions that racked him. 

Remus shifted in his seat. He had never seen Sirius cry before, wasn't sure what to say or if he should say anything at all. Before he had any time to make his mind up, Sirius began to speak again.

"I couldn't stop thinking about it..." His voice was quiet, strangled at first, barely more than a whisper. He cleared his throat, kept going. "I kept drinking and I kept... hearing myself in my head. 'I almost got him bitten by a werewolf!'" His voice twisted into a mockery of himself in a more jovial state of mind, boisterous and laughing but with a strained, frantic edge to it. 

A wave of nausea drew over Remus and he looked away. He wanted to put his hands over his ears and say 'I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to talk about it!' but a part of him wanted to keep listening, to see where this was all coming from and where it was going.

"Who could think a thing like that was a joke?" Sirius continued, mumbling as if he was mostly speaking to himself. "What sort of a person?" He lowered his hands from his face and went silent for a moment, seemingly regarding his palms. 

Remus kept quiet, kept his face turned away, but some of the tension inside him shifted - from a taut line over his shoulders that made him want to shrink in on himself to a mounting, tingling sensation in his chest. There was something in Sirius' voice, a tone he didn't quite dare call regret, that awoke in him not a hope, nothing that ambitious, but an intense longing for understanding. He had long since given up on Sirius ever seeing his own actions that night the way that Remus did, long since buried any wish for a true apology. And yet, something inside him wondered now. Would it actually happen? This ghost of memory that had hung between them all these years, would it finally be released?

Suddenly, Sirius reached out, catching Remus' hand between both of his across the coffee table. Remus started at the unexpected touch, but stopped just short of pulling back. He didn't turn, didn't think he could stand to look into his eyes. This was too much, all of it. 

"It wouldn't have been your fault!" Sirius voice was filled with such intensity that Remus's eyes darted toward him.

"Of course it w-" he begun to object, but when he caught the look on Sirius' face, he fell quiet.

"It would have been mine, Remus... Only mine, never yours!" Sirius' voice was thick with tears, with pent-up emotion, his eyes red-rimmed and with a look of sharp, desperate shame. "It...it's the worst thing I've ever done. If James hadn't stopped me... I don't know how I could've lived with it."

Their eyes locked, and the tension inside Remus mounted. It was only a moment, but it bore the weight of years. Years hanging over them with words unsaid, feelings unrevealed. Remus knew what was coming before the words were spoken, saw them in his friend's eyes but almost didn't dare to believe. After all this time...

"I'm sorry..." Sirius said, and his grip on Remus' hand tightened a little. "Forgive me, Moony..." He broke eye contact then, his head dipping forward over their hands, and Remus thought he felt a drop land on his thumb. 

The band of tension across Remus' chest didn't break. Suddenly it just wasn't there anymore, like a bubble of soap that burst when you weren't looking, and he could breathe a little easier. To hear those words, after such a long time... More than that, to feel the weight behind them. There had been an apology back then too, on James' insistence, but it had been a feet-shuffling, mumbled boyish apology, an apology without eye-contact or pangs of conscience. It had been the apology of a reckless, troubled boy who didn't really feel remorse, or even truly understand what he had done wrong. And Remus... his forgiveness had come unthinkingly, like an exhale following an inhale. What else could he do? They were his only friends, the only ones who loved him for what he was. He couldn't bear to lose them. 

This was not like that apology. This one was freely given, raw and sincere, and bore the weight of realization and remorse. And yet, Remus did not rush to meet it with his forgiveness. He closed his fingers around Sirius' and gave them a squeeze, then gently freed his hand from the others' grip. Sirius did not protest, or comment, instead just shifted in his chair, slumping against the backrest. He looked uncomfortable, almost squirming in his seat, and avoided Remus' gaze by looking out the window. Remus imagined that he felt naked. 

It wasn't that he enjoyed seeing his friend uncomfortable, or that he didn't want to forgive him. It wasn't even that he was still angry with Sirius. He wasn't, not really. They were friends, had never stopped being friends. He and James and Peter had been there for him when no-one else had, and he would never stop appreciating that. Merlin knew where Remus would be without them. But this wasn't about anger, or about his gratitude toward his friends. This was about giving himself the gift of reflection, of looking inside himself and seeing whether he could find forgiveness there, real forgiveness, pure and true and freely given. It was about the freedom to make up his mind without expectations, without fear that he would lose those that meant most to him for having the temerity to be hurt. It was about healing, and there were still questions that hadn't been answered.

"Why did you do it?" he asked, voice gentle but firm. He had wondered about that so many times. Why had his life, his desire not to let his condition ruin him, his need to be safe and keep the beast from harming others, been disregarded by his friend? Had Sirius really thought it an innocent prank that couldn't possibly go badly, or had he thought it was a risk worth taking? Even if Sirius, unlike Remus, had been convinced nothing bad would come of it, why hadn't it occurred to him to ask Remus about it? Hadn't he had the right to decide if it was worth the risk? It was his hands, after all, that risked bloodying. 

"I..." Sirius began, still looking out the window. "I don't know." He sighed deeply, shakily. "I've been racking my brain trying to remember and... I can't. I wish I could say I just wanted to scare him, keep him from sneaking around all the time but... I don't think I even knew back then why I did it, what I hoped would happen..." He turned to look at him then. "I wish I could say that I was sure you'd think it was just as funny as I did but I don't know if I even thought that far ahead... I wish I-" His voice cracked, a choked sound cutting off his speech. He cleared his throat, then continued. "I was such a mess back then... all the bullshit with my family and... I was so fucking angry all the time and Snivellus was just so easy to be angry at." He shook his head, a look of revulsion on his face at not having a better answer.

Somehow, Remus found that the answer didn't disturb him. The reason given was far from ideal, but it was the real. Knowing, on its own, was a relief. Though the fact that Sirius' actions had been based in adolescent thoughtlessness and anger rather than a calculated disregard for his friend didn't diminish the harm he had done, there was still some comfort in knowing it now. He hadn't taken care, had perhaps not been able to take care, not to hurt him... but at least it wasn't intentional. 

A moment went by. Maybe no more than a minute though it felt as though time was standing still, letting him sit with his thoughts and his feelings with no sense of urgency. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply through his nose. When he opened them again, a small smiled touched the corners of his mouth.

"Padfoot..." he said, his voice quiet. Sirius's eyes snapped to him instantly, and there was something very much like fear in them. He didn't say anything, but the apprehension he felt was apparent by the look on his face, the tension in his posture. "I forgive you," Remus said. It was such a simple thing to say, and yet he felt as though a weight lifted from his shoulders when the words left his lips. A shudder went through Sirius, a look of relief more intense than Remus had ever seen on his friend before. Some half-choked sound escaped Sirius' lips before he clamped them shut and shook his head, lifting his hands to rub his face.

"Now either get the hell out or get those bloody boots off before you've gotten mud all over my floor!" Remus said with a wolfish grin. They both laughed for far longer than the comment rightly deserved, the sound bouncing around the small living room as the tension of the moment melted from their muscles.

"All right, all right, don't go sending me a howler now," Sirius replied. He smiled, though he looked tired, half from drink and half from what had just transpired. He got up, making a show of walking exactly in his own muddy footprints back into the hall. As he went, Remus picked up his wand and gave it a twirl, making the muck lift off of the floor and gather into a small floating puddle which trailed Sirius into the hall. Once it was out of view, Remus flicked his wrist.

"Hey!" Sirius exclaimed as it splatted against his already unclean coat. "You get so touchy when things get dirty, Moony," he said, coming back into the living room where he unceremoniously dumped his coat over the back of the armchair. "Got any beer?"

"Sure... just bring me one, too." Remus eyed the coat with some distaste.

Sirius disappeared into the kitchen, and returned before too long with two bottles of beer, already uncapped. He tapped each with his wand and cool frost crept across the glass. Plopping down in the armchair again, he reached over the table to hand one to Remus. 

"Cheers," Remus said, taking the bottle and sitting back on the sofa again, getting comfortable. Reaching for his book, he open it to the spot where he'd stuck the piece of paper earlier. Glancing over at Sirius over the edge of the book, he saw that he had leaned back in the armchair and put his feet up on the coffee table. His left sock had a huge hole in it, from which most of his heel peeked out. Remus chuckled softly and turned his eyes back to the book. Soon, quiet had reclaimed the little living room, broken only by the gentle sound of pages turning and the ticking of an old grandfather clock. 


End file.
